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The Universe of APOCalypse 2500

How it all Began

Archive Cheyenne Mountain
Office of National Scientific Adviser DC
Project Transit #AJT-36879
Personal log entry Dr. Steve Johnson PHD

 

Discovered 350 AV (2450 AD)

 

The current date is May 15 2130 and I am one of the few left here in the Cheyenne Mountain complex. I feel it necessary to create this log in hopes that a historical understanding of what happened on Friday September 13th 2115 may be maintained. At this point national security concerns seem to be outweighed by the need for future generations to know what actually happened in the Arizona desert fifteen years ago. So I guess I will start at the beginning...

 

Wednesday September 11th 2115...

It was weeks since they announced the plan to expedite the Project Transit test. Many on the staff here in DC were concerned about possible ramifications of the incomplete systems effect on the fabric of the universe. I have received, to date, no less than a hundred well thought out requests, urging this office, issue a recommendation of postponement for further study. Since the untimely and somewhat questionable accident that took our national science adviser things had gotten a little strange around the office. I had been approached by no less than four different senatorial aids requesting, unofficially of course, that I hold off passing-on such requests until after the 14th.

 

I must admit I had some personal misgivings as to the validity of the science where project transit is concerned. The concept is straight forward enough and micro scale lab tests all seemed stable. I had read the data and they successfully got electrons to enter one event and exit the other. I must admit I was impressed, however, in the world of quantum interactions things can change dramatically when you increase the relative mass and necessitated power. I had been provided with gigabytes of data that display the stability of what they propose and the computer models bare it out; none the less my colleagues in the purely academic community were singing the doom-song, with unnerving unison.

 

All I could have done was made recommendations to my superiors, unfortunately I couldn't reach them. Since the death of the national science advisor, the deputy advisor had been squirreled away by the secret service at the president's request. At this late hour my only option was to report directly to the joint chiefs who were overseeing the test in three days. Unfortunately the pentagon rout always dead ends in the email box of one of the countless aids that screen the joint chiefs from direct contact and seem only to exist to maintain the bureaucratic bottleneck.

 

Perhaps I should provide a little history at this point. It all started about six years ago during the last Trans Atlantic Transportation convention. They called themselves the Colberg Group, a conglomeration of scientists and physicists from America and Europe bent on using wormholes as a means of ultra high speed transportation. The Colberg’s reasoned that one could create a set of portals and between them establish a stable space-time corridor through which to travel. Most physicists scoffed at the idea calling it pure science fiction. However, they brought with them reams of supporting data and a massive computer model.

 

While much of the scientific community in attendance might have scoffed, the politicians and venture capitalists took the Colberg science a little more seriously. As if they had put something in the coffee or narcotics in the air conditioning they captivated audience after audience of lay folk and politicians alike. They actually pulled it off, leaving the convention with the US, UK, France and Germany and about a dozen corporate sponsors fully sold on the idea of wormholes across the Atlantic, which according to a Colberg spokeswoman was only a first step to trans-galactic travel.

 

After some political wrangling the Arizona desert was chosen as a location alpha where both the research and building of the first gates would take place. The basis of the technology relied on two inversely-polarized quantum-synchronized structures to act as anchor points for the wormhole. It was made quite clear in the Colberg's research that with a single anchor, being the initiator of the wormhole, the other end could open up to literally any point in space. In fact there was some limited data to suggest alternate points in time might also be achieved. (I digress) A massive facility was built to house the scientists and to do the final research. The first was built in the open about one hundred yards from the facility; and was done, they told me, to allow for all the cargo traffic that would be using it. Somewhat of an optimistic view I thought...

 

The first gate was completed July 20th 2115 and was a massive ring shaped structure about one hundred feet across, big enough for freight trains to pass through. Unfortunately for the Colberg group, the grumbling among investors had already started. By this time delays and cost overruns meant they were billions over budget and had only completed one of two gates. Government funding had already begun to divert to more conventional transportation projects. Many once enthusiastic investors began doubting the technology would produce anything other than a financial black hole.

 

So this is where it stood Thursday September 12 2115 as I boarded a plane to fly from DC to Arizona. I guess the Colberg Conglomerate had way more pull with the politicians and possibly the military than anyone in my office could have imagined. The decision to turn it on, to activate the single gate to see if a wormhole would form, was made at the highest levels, they told me. This is what started the scientific panic, in the first place. It's too late now; the bean counters project managers and a chorus of politicians, concerned with investors and wealthy constituents obviously had the president's ear.

 

Friday September 13th 2115 09:30 hours PST...

The day the world changed. I remember thinking what a nice morning it was, just a few clouds in the sky and a cool breeze across the desert. I also remember the excitement that filled the air as hundreds of VIP's and reporters from around the globe looked on as the technicians made the final preparations to switch it on. At first nothing much happened, the device began to glow as power surged through the superconductive ring. In the center among stray electrical discharges and flashes of color a tiny black spot began to grow and grow. As the apparition formed colored streams of light began to course inward and out. A snake like tunnel of light was beginning to form; it must have been a wormhole because it certainly matched the computer predictions, at least in this beginning stage it did.

 

After about thirty seconds of operation things began to go wrong as the power requirements turned out to be well beyond predicted levels. Circuits began to overload as the wormhole began to lose stability as if it was going to collapse all together, this is when they made their mistake. The signal was given to switch in almost one million kilowatts of auxiliary power provided by an off-site reactor. As the new energy surged through the massive secondary supply lines and transformers the phenomena stabilized momentarily than began to grow. They immediately cut the auxiliary power but to no effect; somehow the growing vortex had found another power source.

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The now self sustaining phenomena grew beyond the device that had birthed it, swallowing it whole. The wind whistled as it was sucked into the vortex, which must have opened into a vacuum. The crowd began to panic as it began swallowing nearby equipment, power cables and just about everything else within fifty feet to the front of event horizon. Many panicked as I remember one onlooker proclaim the creation of a singularity and the end of the world. Many others simply had no idea what was happening, unfortunately neither did the Colberg scientists. Then all at once it was quiet, the wind settled, things stopped getting swallowed and everything got calm, real calm. The swirling vortex was still there and well over a two hundred feet from side to side. It was the strangest phenomena I have ever witnessed it was strangely two dimensional. I recall standing to the side, quite a ways away, and noticing you couldn't see it from behind at all and from the side only the glow that emanated from the event horizon; however from the front it was visible and appeared to have three dimensions in our space.

 

The brief calm was abruptly interrupted by something inexplicable, it reversed. Not by sending back the few pieces of equipment it swallowed. Something much more terrifying came through; a sort of thick darkness began to emanate from the phenomenon. It was a strange intangible darkness blocking out the daytime sun, creating a moonlit night. The region of darkness grew rapidly covering the assembled crowd and beyond to the horizon. With it came strange changes to the surrounding desert. Trees that were not there before appeared, so did swamps, insects, grass, and many strange sounds. The smell of rotting vegetation and swamp gases filled the air as people ran in all directions attempting to outrun this new terror, as I could hear scientist and layperson alike begin the panicked talk of divine retribution and a gateway to demons. The moon was up, or at least a moon, not like ours, it was as if I was standing on another planet. Panic and fear, often makes otherwise rational people think irrational thoughts. I myself wondered briefly if I had been drawn into the vortex and emerged on some faraway world millions of light years from Earth. As I began to take a more careful look at my surroundings I began to realize this was still the Arizona desert, sort of, and I was probably still on Earth.

 

Suddenly, I was aware of someone grabbing at my arm, no one I knew just a concerned stranger pulling me toward her hover car. In a state of shock I did not resist as she shoved me in the back seat. We lifted off and headed at considerable speed away from the vortex toward distant light and possible safety. Minutes passed as the land whizzed by below, then at once, we were back in the bright desert sunlight and apparently safe. The flying limousine I had been shoved into turned out to be none other than that of the Denmark delegation. I don't know why, except to think it was a moment of heroic compassion, when they chose to scoop me up.

 

Upon breaking free of the zone of darkness we beheld a scene that can only be described as one from the era of romantic fantasy. A medieval castle, complete with moat was under siege by an army of otherworldly beasts. This castle was certainly not in this desert when I arrived this morning, it somehow made manifest since then. We watched in dumbfounded amazement, as the limo flew slowly by, what one of the delegates called a goblin horde, storming the castle while its seemingly human occupants fought to hold them at bay. Above the mesas and painted cliffs an aurora raged in all its grandeur casting a kaleidoscope of color on the desert floor. I could only muse at what was happening around me as my thoughts turned to the many memos and emails that had crossed my desk, urging me to make the case against activating the single gate.

 

The following weeks brought a media circus of accusations and wild crackpot theories as to what had happened and how. Many scientists from around the world appeared in video and wrote countless blogs chastising the recklessness of our "great blunder," but none of them, not one, could explain the strange happenings. Strangely enough the folks with the best theories were not scientist, but those often delegated to the fringe. Maybe the lunatic fringe was right and we had opened a doorway to a magical realm; that certainly was a more comforting theory than theological Armageddon as the religions of the world were proclaiming. As is typical when billions are involved and reputations are on the line and something goes wrong, everyone began pointing the finger at everyone else.

 

More time passed and things just got stranger. We all looked on in awe as the cataclysm worsened and continental drift accelerated, volcanism flourished and tidal surges decimated most of the world's coastline. Nation began to blame nation, but mostly the US as if we alone had funded and built this catastrophe. I suppose someone had to ultimately take the blame, of course with a disaster of this magnitude blaming our little group of scientists wasn't nearly enough. As DC was swamped by successive tidal surges the government was moved to alternate locations, as I recall in some cases minutes before the city flooded. I was sent as scientific adviser to the joint chiefs off to Colorado. It came as quite a surprise, to be told in route, that Cheyenne Mountain had been recently upgraded and modernized; nearly half the plane thought it was still a museum...

 

From my perch in the gallery above the situation room I watched as the reports streamed in; that one nation after another turned against the United States and declared all of NATO at fault. This went on for weeks that became months as the world political climate steadily deteriorated. Congress and the president were in bunkers somewhere and martial law had been declared nationwide. All the while we received massive amounts of data on geological conditions as the planet was undergoing some sort of accelerated development. I myself, being somewhat of a pacifist, find it hard to understand the need to blame, and then go to war while the planet is literally trying to extinguish the human race all on its own.

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New Year's Day 2117

It's been a tumultuous year and three months of political and geological upheaval; fortunately here in our mountain fortress we have felt little of it, although three months ago we had to, " lock it down," as they say and I have seen neither the sun nor the night sky since then. The first reports reached us here in our mountain, war, yes war finally happened as one by one the nations of the world turned against America and her remaining allies, seizing overseas holdings and expelling long standing military bases. In some corners of the world our assets and troops were outright attacked. All though no nation took credit the joint chiefs knew, or at least thought they knew who to blame. This, I suppose, was our second mistake as we failed to consider an otherworldly force might be operating. Diplomacy failed as denials flew and ultimately, from a state of hostility, came war as each nation sided with its remaining allies and fielded their armies. Although at this point I think the war started more over dwindling resources than who started it all. By now many nations had lost their capital cities and much of their infrastructure was in ruin. Worldwide the increased frequency and strength of natural disasters from earthquakes and volcanoes to mega tsunamis and unbelievably frequent and widespread tornadoes had wrecked much of the civilized world.

 

As the armies of man spread out across the planet reports of strange creatures began to filter into our situation room. By the hundreds, and in some cases thousands, strange mythical beasts were being reported and photographed in all corners of the world. Amazing reports crossed my desk of beasts and humanoids that were straight out of medieval literature. My staff by in large was in disbelief or perhaps outright denial, suggesting more comfortable alternatives such as nerve gas or LSD bombs. However it's hard to deny terabytes of video evidence provided by our own UAV's and satellites. The proof was undeniable, the fey had returned to earth.

 

 

July 9th 2125

The world was beginning to look very different as the continents began slamming into one another massive earthquakes and mega tsunamis ravished the globe. The world wide economy was in ruin, massive atmospheric disturbances swept the globe, all the while war raged on. The cataclysm hand wrecked civilization and killed hundreds of millions while entire nations simply ceased to function. Centralized authority was all but gone and armies, with no support or direction and for many no nation to fight for, turned to survival holding the ground they stood upon. Here in Cheyenne Mountain we watched as the volcanoes and floods decimated the coasts. One by one our information sources faded and our communications with the field fell silent, we lost communication with the commander in chief and most of our nuclear assets five years ago. At last after nearly a decade of isolation we watched as one could actually see day by day movement. Satellite imagery showed clearly the astonishing speed with which the continents drifted ever closer. Many simply went into a kind of denial driven depression, as they simply could not handle the situation. Suicide became somewhat common but never reached epidemic proportions. Others simply went numbly about their duties, having been trained for a nuclear holocaust; this situation was well outside of their expectations. I suppose we, the scientists, have it the easiest. Although we worry about loved ones, there is so much new data to analyze on one of the best mainframes on the planet, it has kept us focused and optimistic by comparison.

 

January 10th 2130

Many here now openly speak of breaking out of our mountain prison. Although we have power for at least another fifty years, and with it the ability to pump water from the deep subterranean wells, our food supplies are getting critical. We have lost contact outside the mountain except for the ever vigilant satellites. Most of my staff has deserted making their way to the surface through one of the escape tunnels. There really was no point in stopping them, what were we supposed to do, shoot them. There are fifteen of us left out of a crew of over one hundred to man this, perhaps, last outpost of the United States. Maybe I will go with the others and take my chances before the food runs out and there is no choice. They tell me we have a well stocked armory and we should arm ourselves before we brave the surface. I must admit, I see the logic in such precautions, At least we won't need the radiation gear, least ways not in our immediate vicinity. I'm still not sure why it had to go nuclear, but at least it was limited; I don't know whether by choice or inability to launch but few detonations were detected, and none within a hundred miles, so they tell me.

 

Monday May 15th 2130

The last five of us are leaving the complex in about an hour. We have spent a week being trained by our Marine guard, and I feel fairly competent with the SAP-556 and my new friend the 45 PPD. We have decided to place the base in low power standby, destroy all the missile launch codes and rig one of the escape tunnel hatches so we can get back in if it comes to that...

 

Good luck and Godspeed to all of us.

Dr. S. Johnson

 

09:30 Monday May 15, 2130 Log ends...